


as mercy guides our hand

by daekie



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-17 12:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11851977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daekie/pseuds/daekie
Summary: The Commonwealth likes to pretend it is fair and balanced; that all those who it exiles are deserving of their fate, and that it is a great kindness to give them an uncertain and frightening future.It's really not.





	1. you are beneath contempt (tamitha theyn)

**Author's Note:**

> based off of jodaaariel's comic [here](https://jodaaariel.tumblr.com/post/164308504160/trial-montage-theres-no-hope-of-winning-a-trial); written with permission.

> _**"Behold - it is the weight of guilt that keeps the accused bound, past any bars or any chain!"  
>   
> ** _

Tamitha snarls, still reeling, her wings wet with blood from the clip; they say past any bars or chain, but they _mock_ her, mock her people anyways.  Her feet are chained harsh to a small metal pole, a small perch; when she refuses to stand on it, refuses to demean herself to the Flightless, they lash out at her until reminded  _mercy, mercy, mercy_ and she hisses curses and damnations at them again and again.  There are no small mercies she is willing to give these people.  If anything, she wishes-burns-reaches for Pamitha's wings, not in formation at their damned-to-fail flight; she wants to rip Pamitha into this cage instead, break every bone in her blood-sister's wings, burn her scribes-damned blood from her veins.  She is no blood-family of a traitor.  She is no blood-family of a traitor.

 ** _"For your crimes -"_ ** she can barely hear them, because every flutter of feathers, every glint of aqua in the crowd (they gawk, these Flightless  _gawk_ ; are they not done with subjecting her to miseries and embarrassments even though she can see the Archjustice's imposing mask and his tall gavel and the jury of Justices acting like they can  _deliberate_ ) makes her think Pamitha is there, to laugh at her, to show what wonderments her betrayal has won her.  Let her laugh.  Tamitha will tear her throat from her body and throw it to the beasts; one such-as Pamitha deserves not even a proper cremation.  She will rip every feather from that woman's wings and let her bloody plucked-bare limbs act as bait.  Clipping her own wings will not stop her.  She doesn't know what she can do about it but she  _will_ , because this will not stop her, none of this will stop her; she will tear the Commonwealth apart.

" _ **Death.**_ "  She knows they won't do it.  The Commonwealth is  _weak_ , no death-penalty for their crimes, only the willful ignorance of what happens after exile - if there is news of what does, she has never wanted to hear of it, nor any Commonwealth nonsense.  She will find her Remnants down there - but still the rabble goes quiet.

" _ **Wait!  Let us simply vote to exile this criminal, instead.  Such cruelty does not fit our Commonwealth - we have mercy on even the worst.**_ "  Someone scoffs, and is quieted into silence; their tone is feminine, acerbic, and she thinks _Pamitha Pamitha Pamitha I'll rip your heart out_ like a lullaby.  Tamitha Theyn has never been scared before; she is scared now, her heart beating against her ribs - so she thinks  _I will find you I will break you and you will never fly again_ , to try and lull herself, to scoff and draw herself upright - her left wing twinges horribly, like a torch to her nerves, and she forces herself to stand against the pain and bear her teeth.

_**"Maybe she will even repent, and learn the error of her ways.** _ _**"** _

 Tamitha spits blood at them and throws herself against the bars until her ankles are raw, reaching for weapons they've taken from her; they've left her just her helmet, like a mockery, a  _mockery_ \- she can't even  _fly_ what what they've done to her -

_**"May you assume the terrible misshapen forms befitting your thoughts and deeds. May you finally see yourself for what you are."** _

They kick her away from the bars of her cage, and they push, and it topples over the edge.

 

Tamitha isn't scared, as she falls, but she's not much at all.


	2. treachery, like weeds, can be weeded out (volfred)

> _**"Behold - it is the weight of guilt that keeps the accused bound, past any bars or any chain!"** _

The cloth is tied around Volfred's mouth, coarse; were he softer-skinned, given flesh instead of bark, it would scrape and cut - but it does not.  They hate his speech, they hate his words; they would have cut his throat out, poured poison down it, were he softer-skinned.  They could say he did it to himself, to avoid capture, and who would not agree?  He is a dissident, he undermines their society - oh,  _what_ a society it is, where the weak and the undertrodden bleed and any measure of a truth their government disagrees with on any level is snuffed out like so quick a candleflame - whatever they did to him behind closed doors, none would question it, save for those close to him.  And those close to him know better than to give themselves away.  He scans the crowd and stays still, and does not think of the papers they could find that they tossed into the flame - not yet. The cloth is fraying, as he works at it.  
His head still aches, where they had pinned him down and carved the Reader's brand into it; so deep it will scar and never grow-over.  The sap still flows from it, in gruesome rivulets, leaving one eye half-blind.

 ** _"For your crimes of insurrection, and - "_  **the Justice pauses for a moment, and Volfred sighs; he has heard this many times before, in his long life.  He has seen enough exiles (Bertrude, twelve years ago, no literacy but he could have sworn the Justice speaking out her crimes had choked on his own spit; the mad crone Udmildhe, who cackled and screeched the whole way, deaf and blind to her crimes; stone-faced Captain Jodariel, not a hair out of place, who had turned herself in for her actions - and _Tinderstauf_ , who he hadn't thought of in almost a decade, and was absolutely fine with keeping it that way) to know how the entire show works; only the words change, if that, and the Justices rotate in-and-out.  They are almost always human, almost always male; curs and Saps given lowly-positions on the side to placate their public.  He knows their names.  (It has become his job to know all he can, after all.)    
  
The Justice clears his throat.  " _ **and literacy -**_ " There is the astonished gasp that always comes from the crowd when literacy is announced as a crime; he chances a glance at the Archjustice, tall and solid and endlessly stoic in his mask and robes - there will be no aid there.  Not that he ever thought there would be.  " _ **The proper punishment, as decided by the judges, will be death."**_

Volfred has heard it all before, and he has no fear of it.  The Commonwealth, so obsessed with their purity of heart and their endless mercy, only sentences people to a likely death; the blood is not on their hands.  Five hundred life sentences, people thrown away so many miles below your feet - of course the populace thinks it's better that way. They don't have to see anything but the show of it.  There is the gasp of a young man, almost-on-tears; Volfred lets his gaze slip from the Archjustice's emotionless mask to - one of his students, staring at him with horrified eyes,  _professor it's not true is it, professor I don't know what to believe, professor Sandalwood please_ \- he looks back to the mask, eyes narrowed.  The rag keeping him silent is almost frayed through.  Perhaps the boy is sheltered, and this is his first Sentencing; perhaps this is the only one he's known the soon-to-be-Exile.

" _ **Wait - let us simply vote to exile this criminal, instead.  Such cruelty does not fit our Commonwealth - we have mercy on even the worst.  Maybe he will even repent, and learn the error of his ways.**_ " The Justices raise hands as one in unison; once upon a time he was sick to the sight of this, but now he is numb.  He has plans to make, and he has people he must trust to continue his plans when he is gone.  

" _ **Your thanks, criminal?**_ " They don't expect Volfred to say much.  But that is their mistake.

"This is no mercy," he snaps, voice like thunder, pulling the fabric from his mouth and letting it fall to the corner of his cage.  "This will not _last_.  We will rise up against you, and your complacency will be your undoing."  Everyone's gone silent; the guards look at him and at the Justices, at the Archjustice, bewildered.  "This unjust system that you have risen up on - a society where your _partner_ , your  _love_ ,or your _passion_ cannot be spoken of or let free in anyone's sight will fall.  There will be more like me, Archjustice Androboles."

The Archjustice rises from his seat, flanked by guards, and only one Justice - a cur, white-furred with a tattered ear - manages to find his voice long enough to squeak out the final words of the Sentencing: " ** _W-we hope your exile moves you to repent_** -" it's hardly intimidating, because the cur's voice shakes, but it is enough.

Volfred Sandalwood falls to the Downside with plans and plots already circulating through his mind, and the Archjustice watches him go and thinks of a long-ago memory.


	3. more suited to your kind (the moon-touched girl)

(the moon-touched girl curls in on herself and tries to be very small, very small, very small;   
there are raucous cries coming, or is she thinking those up, because they were in her ears and pulling at her hair and  _laughing_ and  _laughing_ at her with spite in their eyes -   
she is too pale, too odd, too different-faced to fit in; too alone, too alone, too alone.   
 the scribes are with her, they must mean for this, but even though she must rely on their guidance they are so very quiet in this moment.   
she hopes and pleads for one word, just one word, or a feather-light touch on her hand or a gentle breath on her cheek;   
  
but nothing ever comes, no, nothing ever comes.)

They mutter at her, call her  _witless_ and  _half-born_ , say  _maybe she's half-wyrm for all the sense she keeps_ ; and they pull on her strong hair and scoff at her when it never lies flat, and they say her nose is too broad - is it any wonder, then, that a girl (she wasn't always a girl, they said, but it was silly? because she was always maybe not a  _girl_ but she was a  _she_ and she felt it in her bones, like Triesta, like Milithe) like that is suited for exile?  The crowds are small.  For military crimes, sometimes, they swell; for members of the community (often convicted for hidden literacy in their distinguished age as they fall out of favor), the crowds can billow out into the streets.  But for one witless,  _stupid_ girl, with no friends or family or caretakers to call her own?

Nobody's interested in that.  It's barely a spectacle at all, really; even the Justices seem tired, bored.  The onlookers are youth too young to know the standards of these things, elders who think there might be more than just nonsense to her muttering; there are curs and wyrms and saps, but few humans, few humans.  There is another child who she knows by-face, skin dark but mottled with pale the same color of hers, moon-touched alike - their eyes meet hers, and they turn away, guiltily.  She puts her head back in her arms, between her knees, and whispers the teachings that have come to her head since she was oh-so-young.  Jomuer's quick paws, Triesta's kindness, Ha'ub's trickery - they have kept her alive, voices in her ears at night, an invisible hand on her shoulder as she draws constellations with charcoal onto the walls of abandoned houses.  She has known the sigil since she was able to walk.

They've always been there for her.

("If, um, if the Scribes think this is what should happen, I will not argue, then?"    
none of them listen to her. nobody even notices her. she tries to curl into herself again, so small, so small, so small.    
she repeats her mantras to herself and buries her head in her hands and when she starts to feel the sensation of falling, she is almost thankful -

triesta and ha'ub could fly. is this what flying is like?)


	4. live out your days in penitence (jodariel)

> _**"Behold - it is the weight of guilt that keeps the accused bound, past any bars or any chain!"** _

~~Captain~~ Jodariel - no. She is but Jodariel now. She stands, shoulders-wide feet-together, military posture.

This is the fate she has known happens to deserters, to betrayers, to liars and underminers of the Commonwealth's glory. The moment she had the thought to free those Harps - who were so young, barely out of childhood, barely the age of Hedwyn who has always clung to her so close even though he is nearly an adult - they were still Harps. She could have stopped herself, then, and let justice run its' course; Harps are wicked to the core, and they cannot be saved. But she had seen their wide-eyed faces in the cage as her soldiers threw sticks and rocks at them, treated them like animals, and she had thought of the foundlings she had mothered - It's no matter.

She awaits her sentencing with a heavy brow.  Jodariel will pay for her own actions, for she will be just.

The Justices need nothing to keep her in place; in fact, some of them seem confused when they glance at her - Jodariel has served for years on the Bloodborder, and never has she been reported for any misdeeds until this one.  There is little system in place for the wrongdoer reporting themself, but it will have to do; no matter her records or her regret, she has still freed prisoners of war, she has still committed an unforgivable crime.  Her chains are for show, and the bars of the cage are weak, as they always are - but she will not step out, she will not move, she will accept what she knows she deserves for what she knows she has done.

(They were children.  They were  _children_.  Her traitorous brain reminds her of those girls, one cradling a wing close and biting back wails of pain whenever someone shoved her, pushed her; the first time she'd heard the noise her brain had acted before she did, and she had half-turned before any possible worries died in her throat.  Only Harps.  It's only Harps.  Still, the whimpers had stuck with her the entire time; she had carried out these orders before with captured squadrons, but -

she looks at them and keeps seeing the faces of the girls she has raised, who had no parents to go back to anymore; those bruised and dirty faces with gritted teeth, _okay, mama, let's go again, I can scratch you this time_! - she cannot take it anymore.)

**_"For your crime of insubordination, the proper punishment, of course, will be death."_  **

(That would be acceptable to Jodariel as well.  She has failed her country by freeing some of their sworn enemies; she could take their place on the execution block.  But Jodariel knows how these things work, because she has watched it play out every time a deserter is dragged back by their hair.)  In her trial, the Harp-Justice speaks out in her defense, meaningless as any of it is; the feathers of his robe shake with his head.  He isn't much of a symbol, but then again, a true Harp would never be allowed ten feet into the Commonwealth unless in chains.

" _ **Wait - let us simply vote to exile this criminal, instead.  Such cruelty does not fit our Commonwealth - we have mercy on even the worst.  Maybe she will even repent, and learn the error of her ways.**_ " 

She has already repented - but no, has she, really?  Jodariel does not regret freeing those Harps.  She regrets wounding her country, going against the laws she has known in her bones her entire life, but she does not regret freeing children.  Maybe they will remember her actions, if they live, if they have not been shot down already by her brothers-in-arms; maybe they will be kind.  The chance of kindness is not worth her actions, but she knows still she will never truly repent the way she should.  Not the way they want her to, not the way she knows is supposed to happen.  Her foundlings - they'll be kept safe, and as long as they don't suffer for her actions, she is willing to pay this price and any prices thereafter.

"We hope your exile drives you to repent," the former Captain whispers, lips moving soundlessly with the Justices' words, and the river rushes ever onwards.


End file.
